1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an inductor, and more particularly, to an inductor capable of being applied to a large current application such as solar power, wind power, and automobile industry.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Recently, electronic products have had various functions and high performances, and particularly, have tended to have been developed slim and light. The sizes and volumes of components mounted in the electronic products should be decreased to achieve the slim and light electronic products.
In particular, as semiconductor integrated circuit technology has developed, slim and light circuitry is able to be implemented, however, it is not easy to reduce volumes of inductors mounted inside the electronic products. Therefore, research and development to implement the slim and light inductors has been continuously conducted.
Meanwhile, since the power supply included in the electronic products needs to reduce harmonic frequencies and to improve an input power factor in commercial electricity, a power factor correction (PFC) converter, circuitry for improving the input power factor, has been widely used.
In addition, an interleaved PFC converter (or an interleaved boost converter) using two separate inductors has been applied to reduce a ripple of an input current (Iin) and to improve the efficiency of a PFC converter.
To this end, since air gaps are needed in magnetic paths in a core intermediate portion and core side surfaces to manufacture a conventional inductor, and a separate cutting process is necessarily required to form the air gaps, there are problems that manufacturing costs for processing increase, the volume of the inductor increases and management of the air gaps is difficult.